Coming into this class with no prior exposure to Islam, I remember two of the first things that I learned in this class, one being that there are 99 names of god and secondly about the Shahada. Each of these 99 names for Allah represented a quality and attribute of god. The Shahada is the […]
Conference Of the Birds For this piece I recorded a dance rendition of Farid Attar’s “The Conference of the Birds” to Kanye West’s “Runaway.” I chose to record in a dance studio in order to have access to the mirrors. The dancers start out all doing different things and are meant to look very confused […]
Here, I created a composite image of a scene from Puerto Rican pop artist Jennifer Lopez’s new video “ I love you Papi,” and a picture of the front cover of a version of the Bengali science fiction short story “ Sultana’s dream,” by Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain which we read in class. Despite the […]
My Art piece was inspired by Muhammad Iqbal’s poem “ Complaint and answer.” The background of the piece is a picture of a dust storm that is supposed to be cause by the words coming out of a mouth which I drew in with pencil. After reading and talking about both poems, I was […]
One of my favorite stories in the class so far has been the comic novel, Persepolis: Story of a childhood. I really enjoy the medium through which the story is told, which is through an autobiographical comic novel. The story is told through the voice and eyes of a child. For me, this approach […]
My Calligraphy piece was inspired by the importance of the Quran as an eternal text in preserving God’s message. In addition, I hoped to emphasize the central role that Karim (generosity) which I symbolize using flowers, as well as Dhikr (Remembrance, usually involving the recitation), which I symbolize in the preservation of the flowers and […]
I made a collage inspired by the piece Aminata Sow Fall’s “ The Beggar’s Strike.” I used black and white pictures of money, change, and hands. I was very interested in Zakat, one of the five pillars that states that it is mandatory for Muslims to give alms, or charity to the poor. […]
Merengue for Mustafa This piece is a merengue song; merengue is the native music of the Dominican Republic (where I am originally from.) I was inspired by one of the videos on the i-sites: Music video Yu Mustafa “O Chosen One” by Sami Yusuf (English-Turkish) and many of the reading expressing devotion to the prophet Muhammad […]